Appreciating asset: Bank of America's Jodi Rolland finds purpose in childhood loss.

• Author: Sukin, Gigi
• Position: GOOD COMPANY

With Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America's expanded presence in Colorado's Front Range communities came Market President Jodi Rolland, BoA's local enterprise leader, head of corporate social responsibility and market executive for Global Commercial Banking in the Colorado market. Rolland's positivity radiates. Nearing 50, she's spent more than half her lifetime climbing the corporate ladder at Merrill Lynch with quiet confidence and sticking it out when Bank of America absorbed the company she grew up in.

CB: Upon completing the requisite LinkedIn stalker session, I noted you went to the University of North Dakota. Is that where you're from?

JR: I actually drove five hours every day to go to college. Two and a half hours each way. I grew up in northern Minnesota. My mother died when I was a little girl and my sisters raised me, so college was on my own dime. And that was the closest good college with a decent business program.

So you knew business was your calling all along?

I did, because when I was 19, right out of high school, I went to work full-time, because I had to make money to go to school. I made a $5,000 bonus at Christmas, and invested it. And it turned out they lied to me. Two weeks later it was gone. The mutual fund they told me to put it in was mysteriously turned into soybean options and expired worthless. I lost every penny.

So, altruistically, the reason I came into this business, I said there had to be honest people out there who would help people with their money. So I started at the University of North Dakota with a major in finance. Almost the moment I was done with college, I was told that Merrill Lynch had the best training program of any firm in the industry and that if I could get hired there, that's where I should go.

Fast-forward and talk about the period when Bank of America and Merrill Lynch merged and how that affected you.

2008 was just a crazy year. We were living here in Denver. At the time I was running a sixth of the U.S. And I can tell you exactly where I was, exactly what I was doing. Texas was under me, and I remember leaving on a Friday afternoon and we weren't sure what the fate of Lehman Brothers was going to be over the weekend. At the same time, there was a hurricane hitting Galveston, Texas, and the mayor came out and said anyone who does not evacuate, it's sure death. So I'm leaving Friday and I find out we have an assistant who didn't evacuate. She found the highest ground she could, which...